Philip D. Gingerich, PhDProfessor of Geological Sciences Gingerich is a professor of geological sciences and director of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. He has studied the evolution of archaic whales for over twenty-five years, collecting specimens in Pakistan and Egypt. In 2000, he found fossils that confirmed the assertion by molecular biologists that whales evolved not from mesonychids, extinct wolf-like animals, but from artiodactyls, the ancestors of hippos and camels.

Tim Read, PhDAssistant Researcher Read, is an assistant researcher with the Microbial Genetics Group at The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland. In addition to examining the genome and evolutionary history of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, Read also explores microbial genes as potential drug targets.

Carl R. Woese, PhDProfessor of Microbiology Professor Woese of the University of Illinois, is a self-described molecular biologist turned evolutionist. Woese used ribosomal RNA as an evolutionary record to identify archaea as a huge and diverse group, separate from the prokaryotes (bacteria) and the eukaryotes. As a result, the entire “Tree of Life” as we know it was re-drawn into these three dom